Stephen Connolly, Jesse Glick, and I were whining one day how crazy it is that we still support Java5, which came out nearly a decade ago and EOLed in 2009. One thing led to another, and now we are trying to see if we can join several OSS projects in drawing a line in the sand to move on to Java 6 as the minimum requirement.

So far we've approached Maven which really likes this, and Jenkins, where this has been partially done already, and Ant

The plan on the table is to put up a one-page website, with a big "we are moving on" message with our collective logos on it. I think this would help us reach wider audience, in this way.

Being able to require Java 6 offers a number of technical benefits, such as more concurrency libraries, NIO enhancements, console API, scripting, and better XML support. It also comes with the new class file format that improves the start-up time. And beyond Java6, I think this would set a great precedent to help us move on to Java7 and Java8 more aggressively when that time comes.

So here is an invite to the Gradle community. Would you be interested in joining us in moving on to Java6 as the minimum runtime requirement?